BlackBerry has been struggling to regain their formal hold on the Smartphone market for a while. Their traditional strengths of reliable email and easy to use keyboards have become overshadowed by other manufacturers’ large app stores and touch screen phones. In an attempt to get back into the game, Blackberry has created a new OS and released their Z10 model which features a full touch screen to compete with other manufacturers.
With the phone’s design, Blackberry takes an approach that is smooth, clean, and professional. It has square edges with rounded corners and a slightly larger screen than the iPhone 5. Weighing in at 4.85 oz it is also slightly heavier, but this small difference is welcome and gives the phone a solid feel when in use.
The Z10 incorporates a 4.2 inch screen that looks sharp and clear. Its 1280 x 768 resolution provides a good viewing experience for both videos and apps. If your puny phone screen just isn’t cutting it though, you can connect your phone to a TV or projector using the Z10’s mini HDMI port.
Performance wise, the Z10 is extremely fast and responsive. Pictures come out great on the 8 MP front camera and the 2 MP rear camera is perfect for video chats. With a 1.5 GHz processor and 2 GB of RAM, it can handle almost any app or movie with ease. Under the back panel of the phone, there is also a SD card slot which allows for up to 64 GB of expandable memory in addition to the 16 GB of internal storage for music or anything else you may want to put on your phone.
Using the BlackBerry Z10’s OS takes a little getting used to, but is very intuitive and geared towards multi tasking and running multiple apps at once. There is no back button on the phone to navigate back to your home screen, rather a swipe of your finger brings up running apps so you can quickly switch back and forth and “Flow” between them or gather the information you need off the app’s tile without even having to maximize it.
Messaging is also emphasized on the Z10 with BlackBerry’s Hub feature. This compiles messages from email accounts, Facebook, Twitter, and many others all in one place so there is no need to open up multiple apps in order to access messages from different accounts. This feature is extremely convenient and along with the Z10’s extremely accurate and easy to use touch screen keyboard, makes for one of the best messaging experiences around.
The BlackBerry Z10 makes a valiant attempt to restore users faith in BlackBerry and revive the company, but it might be too little too late. While the phone’s design and experience that the Z10 offers is great and is sure to be a welcome arrival to current BlackBerry users, it will be difficult to convert faithful Android and Apple users to a phone that has an admirable, yet much smaller app store.
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